A critique on Vinyl and Digital Media, or “Why vinyl is so hipster” according to Gene, and Why Gene is Wrong according to Stephen

It’s a long road to Toronto. As Thai, Emma (henceforth referred to as “DJ Swedeheart”), Gene and I head north, we were bound to slip into some form of pseudo-intellectual debate. And, as it so happens, everyone chose to pick on my latest hobby – collecting vinyl records.

“Look, I’m a big fan of vintage technology, but it has its place.” said Gene.

“Which is where exactly?” I asked.

“In the past.”

Gene questions the continued relevance of vinyl in the digital era, emphasizing its obvious drawbacks. Physically, they’re unwieldy, requiring a large amount of storage space and tentative care to keep them in proper shape. You can’t take them with you in the car. Their audio quality is comparable to that of the CD, and the turntable itself requires a great deal of maintenance. And of course you can’t easily move between tracks.

I argue that the turntable experience succeeds because of, rather than in spite of, these things.

The LP, or “Long Play” album is a compositional experience. To skip between tracks was not only relatively difficult, but could potentially damage the record. To play an album, you must listen to it in its entirety. This is a distinctly different experience than later audio formats, such as the cassette or cd which allowed for scrubbing or the switching between audio tracks. However, I argue that it’s precisely the uninterrupted play of the LP that allowed for the powerful sensual and political experience of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” or The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. The meaning of those albums could simply not be determined from one song, but requires a listening of the entire album to understand the artists’ intent. Much in the same way the notes compose the track, so the tracks compose the album. There is a larger narrative at work, a story lost if the songs are listened to out of the artist’s context. The technological constraints of vinyl are actually a crucial element to the listening experience, because not only do they determine how an album is listened to, they also influences the artist in the creation of their music. You are, in a sense, forced to sit next to the hi-fi and listen to the music in its entirety. And from operating under these constraints, you achieve a particular experience.

<Pause. Break for Eminem jam session as we enter Detroit. DJ Swedeheart uses Spotify to play “Love the Way You Lie”.>

Granted, digital music has its advantages. When you want to play a particular track, there’s no substitute for the instant gratification offered by iTunes or Spotify. But because technology provides us with access to this “instant on” style of listening, my critique is that such a phenomenon has changed the culture of music production itself. Artists are focused more on individual hits instead of longer compositions. We’ve progressed (regressed?) to a jukebox mentality where singles are the new norm, and the digital mixtape culture dominates our musical experience as we weave disparate tracks into the fabric of our immediate environment. There’s a reciprocal relationship here where the technology influences the music and vice versa leading to a shift in our musical experience from both the creator and listener’s perspective.

But is this experience “better?” Gene argues that you’re free to listen to a digital album in its entirety, just as you can with a vinyl record. But, although that may be technically true, I would argue that the culture is moving in the opposite direction. iTunes is based off the “$1/song” model that has helped to put stores like Borders out of business. The LP album is no longer relevant in our current socio-cultural context, and this extends into digital music. Listening to an album from start to finish is becoming a much rarer experience. And, of course I would be remiss not to mention sites such as the Pirate Bay or Usenet that offer easy and free access to terabytes of digital music. But I view this as an extension of the instant gratification experience we’ve come to expect through our technology.

I don’t claim that listening to an old vinyl album is a “better” experience than listening to Carle Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe.” But I do argue that the two experiences are different, and they are different because of the technological and cultural shifts we’ve encountered over the past few years. Do I prefer one experience over the other? I depends on the context. And I don’t expect this article to initiate a resurgence in vinyl listening. But I reject the idea that Spotify or iTunes is an “evolved” or “improved” vinyl experience. I view it as something separate that operates under different constraints and, in some cases, completely different environments.

<As if to spite my argument, the other passengers decided to listen to “Avenue Q” in its entirety as we cross the border into Canada. My pleas for “America, Fuck Yeah!” went sadly unheeded. Well, maybe on the way back.>

Then again, perhaps this argument is only the resurgence of my inner Seattle hipster. Gene certainly thinks so, although I don’t sit in my basement listening to “Hotel California” out of self-proclaimed irony. Actually, I’ve got a serious problem with how the word “ironic” is used today, but that’s another rant. So, my friends, I leave you as we continue our way on this desolate road into parts unknown. Yes, that last sentence is both a metaphor and a description of my current situation. See you all soon.

Meta

8 comments

First of all, while my comments are somewhat dismissive with regards to “vinyl culture”, my issue is more with the almost regressive nature many people that have a vinyl collection possess. I know a number of people with vinyl collections, many of which are avid music listeners, but on only extremely rare instances has a record player been the focus of a particular social interaction, either spending more time talking about their vinyls than listening to them or pretty much listening to music in digital formats anyway.

I used to partake in needle drop parties with college friends who had raided a going out of business record store. What resulted was an eclectic mix of records from a wide variety of genres, almost none of which I had heard of. What made this experience so meaningful was that it was one of shared discovery. We had this collection readily available, and none of it was the result of “recommendations” or deeply intentional choices. While you can technically do the same kind of thing with a random play feature on a CD player or multi-CD player or even digital playlists, it is psychologically much more tempting to switch tracks.

What’s nice about the vinyl experience in this case is that because of the unwieldy nature, there’s more of a tendency to just sit and listen. It takes, comparatively, significant effort to get up, put the record away, put on a new one and get back to being comfortable as opposed to switching tracks on a playlist.

The question that I think is most interesting in the discussion we had is how do we take something that I consider a very powerful experience in listening to music and make it meaningful in a new social context? I don’t think the LP or “concept album” is dead, and I think it can create long-lasting memories and unique experiences in ways that having music available at your fingertips seamlessly at all times, in any context (in the car, on the subway, between classes, on your computer) does not.

I would also argue that the music culture that was ushered in by the iPod (and even earlier, Napster) has devalued music and made it less special since the experience of listening to music has become so commonplace and ubiquitous. Music has always had a “multimedia” context, either from live performances (musicians/stage shows), being part of films/animation/music videos/games and many other such examples. The “music for its own sake” (getting a new album and listening to it religiously, sharing it with friends, etc) is definitely less commonplace than it was up until the late 90s.

Is this something we want to create or is the convenience of digital going to relegate the vinyl experience to small “boutique” shows and novelty?

I think in addition to the differences pointed out between the Vinyl/LP experience and the single experience, there is also a difference between the vinyl experience in itself and the LP experience. I also think you could examine that difference with just as much depth. So, because I too am a vinyl collector, I’d like to examine the experience of vinyl in itself, aside from the larger experience of the LP. I think doing so would scope out the idea of just listening to an LP continuously in digital format. Furthermore, I want to do it with the “four ways in”.

The Artist: What makes an artist (or label) choose to release on vinyl? What is going through their mind when they make the choice to release on a clearly less usable medium? For starters there is an issue of the traditional DJ who spins actual records. I know many serious electronic dance music artists see vinyl as the most important medium they can release in, because the only way they’ll get exposure is if they can get DJ’s to spin their records at clubs. But a lot of indie rock and punk bands release on vinyl sometimes too, why do they do it? I don’t think they have the same kind of stake in it that electronic musicians do. I think they do it because they want to appeal specifically to that culture that appreciates vinyl records, but why do they appreciate it? Well…

The Artifact: Let’s leave the music out of this a moment and just talk about a vinyl record without caring about what is pressed on it. I see vinyl records as having a distinct materiality, and from that a much more rich experience in just handling them than tapes and CDs. Then of course this contrasts even more with digital music, which has no materiality at all! Vinyl records have weight to them that makes them feel substantial–the way people say a cell phone made of plastic feels cheap compared to a cell phone made of metal based purely on their weight–the vinyl record just feels good to hold. I think they also have a particular (and pleasing) smell associated with them, and I believe the psychological phenomena of olfactory memory makes this very important. One last thing, moving away from the record itself, there is the packaging; again there is an issue of materiality, the heavy paper of a vinyl sleeve against the plastic of a CD case. This could be an issue to raise all by itself, but I also think the era of coolest album art was in the vinyl era, because it is a bigger canvas! So I think all these things appeal to a certain kind of person, someone like…

The User/Listener: I think a big characteristic of the kind of person that vinyl appeals to is someone interested in materiality; someone who feels closer to a thing they can touch, and feel, and that has a particular and pleasing response to being experienced in that way. I can speak as a vinyl collector myself, the truth is I don’t listen to my vinyl records as much as my digital copies just as a matter of convenience. But I like having the vinyl records because it is something that I can see, and touch, and point at and say this is mine! Which brings me to what I think another big characteristic of the vinyl listener might be, something that probably belongs more in…

The Sociocultural Context: When I have a vinyl record I can point to it and say I own that, it is mine. Do we actually own the digital songs we download? I wouldn’t dare argue that the move towards digital download is not because it is more convenient; it is much more convenient, and that’s why I have a huge digital music collection. However, I also think the digital download model allows the music industry to better enforce a model of ownership that is, in my opinion, much more beneficial to them than to us. You don’t own a song you’ve downloaded, you’ve bought a license to play it on your computer. I know that legally, the same could be said of vinyl, but when you’ve spent money on music I think there are people who like to have something physical (and substantially physical, re: materiality) that they can point and say “there it is, I bought it, it’s mine!” So I really believe that a resurgence in appreciation for vinyl may mean a lot more than a preference for the LP over single track format; it may also be (it is for me at least) a way of making a statement against the gradual restriction in right of ownership of purchased music that has occurred over the last twenty years.

Well, all that ended up being longer than what I set out to write. So without any good conclusion I choose to end abruptly right here.

Both the post and the comments on this were so much fun to read. One thing I might add to the experience of vinyl vs digital audio files is the differences in audio quality. Since vinyl is an analogue recording you don’t lose those little itty bitty parts like you do with the sampling done with digital recordings. However, over time records get warn down and things like dust can create white noise in the background.

I perceive myself as a reminiscent person (I don’t know if I’ve used the right word). I used to buy a lot of CDs when I was in high school. I refuse to download them online one by one, simply because I love the way that all these songs are integrated in a single CD. It is like they all represent one single thing, as if they are trying to tell a single story for me, and this is so beautiful. I refuse to listen to any CD with different order of songs from the original one, because I think the order does matter a lot, since I’m actually listening to a complete story. I used to listen CDs one by one continuously at late night alone when I was in high school. I define this experience as “going to a concert. It’s such a good memory, but I don’t have the luxury to experience this a lot this time.

So this brings me to the second part of my comment. I do believe all the things are pointing to consumption. Why do you think Apple sells songs individually? I guess that’s because people cannot pay them as a whole. Also, this society is aiming at doing things faster and faster. Do we really care about quality? Yes, we can just listen to these songs that we love, but we lose the patience to listen to the whole story now. Right, I’m talking about patience and slowness, and I just don’t believe things can be done beautifully and gracefully if they are done in great speed.

I’m not as big a music buff as others in this thread, but singles have been a part of the music industry since long before digital media. Instead of buying an entire album, you would buy just the song (usually packed with a “B-Side” which is basically a filler song that wasn’t good enough to make it onto the album). Also, sometimes albums actually aren’t very good taken as a coherent whole. Sometimes there really are only a couple of good songs on an album, so being able to buy the good songs is a benefit.

But actually, your experience is not unheard of. Pink Floyd is a common example of an artist with a lot of fans who refuse to listen to the tracks one by one, instead listening to the albums as a whole. They will argue that you can’t “experience” Pink Floyd correctly any other way.

For me, I would say that the ability to create my own playlists using the songs I like is more important than an artist’s story (or lack thereof, perhaps in the case of the Sigur Ros album Kevin posted about). This way, I can tell my own stories and create my own musical experiences.

Katie I don’t mean to be the bearer of bad news but your assertion about audio fidelity is patently untrue. There’s certainly something to be said of people preferring digital or analog recordings but the fact of the matter is digital recording is absolutely not lower resolution. What you’ve touched on is an issue that is two-fold: analog recordings have a natural and “warm” filtering to them (magnetic tape, tube amplifiers, vinyl records) which people find more pleasant and the second is that the CD is a long-standing relic. It was originally introduced in 1982. [edit: the warmth of analog is often a direct result of their physical nature/limitations]

Here’s the thing, when CDs first came out their filtering was next to nil, so any inconsistencies or imperfections were extremely audible and many people found that distasteful (along with poor high frequency filters, meaning hissy awfully bright albums). This resulted in a new industry of audio engineering and mastering. In the vinyl days, the process was much more “coarse” as the record masked many of the issues. Certainly recording techniques have gotten better, but the physical grooves on a record just can’t get much closer together or deeper meaning we’re pretty much stuck with material limitations.

Almost everything out there today is actually “dithered” down to 16-bit (which was the CD standard and still is) but most music is recorded at 24-bit (or crazily even 32-bit) and very high sample rates (again 44.1k is standard, but 96k or above is quite common now which allows for lots of time stretching like the difference between 60 and 30 frames per second on film) which has a much much higher dynamic range as well as more detailed frequency information. There’s a huge portion of the mastering industry surrounding trying to “preserve” the audio fidelity of 24-bit but it’s mostly tricks of the ear. Imagine trying to paint the Mona Lisa with 8-bit sized pixels (or even 16-bit era pixels for that matter). It’s an oversimplification but the point is that you can’t capture that level of fidelity. Dithering is literally making something shittier in the least noticeable way possible. Mp3s are also a terrible standard and came at an inopportune moment. Many indie artists will release in lossless audio formats that are close to the size of mp3 without the loss of frequency data.

To be honest, there’s just a lot of “bad information” getting shared and purchased daily. [edit: of course artists are trying to correct this by releasing or re-releasing in better quality but try to consider the pure volume of music that has been put out on CDs since their inception.] There were several pushes to move to a better physical CD standard but they never really took off, the closest we have is DVD which is almost never used for music. Same with mp3. It’s an unfortunate push by record companies to keep using the same format because it would invalidate millions and millions from the mastering industry since part of the process of dithering is for producing physical CDs.

To Matt’s points: while I agree with you about the nature of “ownership” and how to some degree it is simply purchasing a license for use, quite a number of companies have extremely generous licensing agreements. We have just arrived into an era where almost everything is being sold as a service in products that have almost always had conventionally physical ownership, like the book for example. While our generation and the ones that came before us have a strong aversion to suddenly feeling like we don’t “own” things anymore, I’m not so certain the generations that grow up with that model see things in the same way.

I believe that people will come to view something like an iPhone as a multi-purpose “portal” to their content, and come to see this as very natural. A physical vinyl, or to simplify, a CD, has very limited use. You can deal with the physicality of the object, or you can stick it into a media capable device and play it. However, unless I do manual conversions, I cannot play that music on my iPod, on tablet devices, switch easily from listening in the car to in my computer (at least compared to Bluetooth communication let’s say). What about on my TV through something like a soundbar?

Physical media is for a wide variety of products going the way of the dodo, as the sentimentality of physical products is outweighed by their inconvenience. Am I more interested in the content or the thing itself? For some people, it is the thing itself, which is why vinyl will likely never die completely or at least will be replaced by a higher quality physical equivalent.

I think “ownership” in a certain sense is overrated. What difference does it make to me if I “own” a physical product if it gets lost, stolen or broken? I have no recourse. It is now unusable. You could argue that technically our entire identities could get compromised in our increasingly digital presences and accomplish the same thing but opening the debate to security creates a different set of criteria than the simple comparison of physical to digital.

To Rayne: I think the word you’re looking for is “nostalgic” though I think reminiscent works well enough in the context. The historical significance of an album, especially one on a CD, is that because it now stores “up to 70 minutes!” there was a tendency to fill space. Certainly concept albums exist that focused on providing a concrete experience, like the quintessential example of Pink Floyd’s The Wall or even American Idiot by Green Day, but in general album songs were stuffed with both a lot of filler and “single-worthy” tracks. As a matter of fact, the change in focus to digital does actually free artists to some degree since they can produce an experience like this in 30-40 minutes instead of trying too hard to have a full CD of music. The whole idea of single CDs and tapes actually supports the notion that many people do enjoy “just the hits” which is partly why the rise of iTunes really blew up, since now you could really purchase more than “just the hits” without forcing you to buy an entire mostly terrible album. Certainly you still can purchase the entire album, but I don’t think opening up purchases to single songs is a bad thing necessarily since I don’t believe that every album needs to be listened start to finish in its entirety, or that every album is a cohesive artistic statement that needs to be preserved in a singular way.

I realize reading back, my discussion is a bit scattershot but I just wanted to add on to what I was saying earlier. The nature of “filler” on albums has been present since the LP as well, compared to the original vinyls which really could only hold about one song. My girlfriend Michelle amusingly recalls having “Monster Mash” on vinyl and being forced to flip the record because it couldn’t even fit on one side.

There’s actually an interesting brief side discussion about the nature of the recording in general. The idea of an audio recording is actually a bizarre anomaly in that in the early days, they were used almost entirely to prop up the sheet music market. The goal, and predominant form of amateur and consumer music interaction outside of big events, was learning to play it for themselves and friends. The idea of sitting and listening to something that never changes was absolutely bizarre and foreign to even the record companies until roughly the 40s. So it’s really only been for about the last 60-70 years that music has taken this form of a ‘fixed’ recording as a widely accepted means of passively interacting with music. I’m not sure the same considerations of ownership existed when music was mainly ‘made’ in real-time. I imagine a similar analogy to having sheet music of a song is similar to having the manuscript for a Shakespeare play in that you technically “own” the pages that you have but they are worthless in some sense without the performance that springs forth from it.